


when i'm close to you (we blend into my favourite colour)

by sulfuric



Series: bright [1]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Synesthesia, Unrequited Love, a Lot of emotional repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: statistically, most people don't take more than five seconds to say something to their soulmate after realizing the universe has paired them together. brooke and chloe take approximately six years, but better late than never, right?





	when i'm close to you (we blend into my favourite colour)

**Author's Note:**

> me???? PROJECTING????? it's more likely than u think
> 
> this has a lot of Sad Times mostly related to internalized homophobia and some impressively extensive emotional repression so like. Take Care Of Urself
> 
> also everyone in this universe has synesthesia because mmmmmmmmmmm i said so ENJOY

**** Brooke knows the statistic.  _ By the time they reach high school, 73% of people will have already met their soulmate.  _ It’s a universe thing. There’s a lot of research that’s gone into it, but not a lot of results that have come out. All that’s really known is that every human is born colourblind, and they stay that way up until they meet the love of their life - their soulmate. Of course, there’s always been cases where people never meet their soulmate, or they have more than one soulmate, or, the rarest of anomalies - they aren’t their soulmate’s soulmate. But those are in the vast minority of scenarios, so Brooke isn’t really worried. The overwhelming majority says that she’ll meet her soulmate, and she’ll probably meet them soon.

It’s not like she’s expecting to meet her soulmate  _ today _ , but, well, time is running out. It’s the first day of sixth grade, and Middleborough Middle School (she knows. The whole town knows, but still, the name remains the same.) looms over her like a suburban skyscraper. Three whole floors! 

Is today the day? Hundreds of brand new faces lie not ten metres in front of Brooke, just waiting to be seen. Perhaps even the one - the one to bring colour bursting into her black and white life. What if they’re right inside the door? The idea both excites her and terrifies her at the same time. Today might be the day. It might be the hour, even! 

 

Her mom definitely thought so. They’d sat together at their kitchen table, Brooke too keyed up to eat anything but a few nibbles of toast and a single sip of orange juice - which wasn’t really  _ orange  _ orange, according to Brooke’s mom.

“So, honey, how are you feeling?” she’d asked, wiggling her eyebrows. 

Brooke took a deep breath, smiling nervously. “Scared. Excited. I don’t know!” she said, playing with the sleeve of her new-old cardigan. New for her, at least. 

“If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” her mom stated simply, shrugging. But the smile on her face was undeniable. After a pained moment, she giggled and reached out to grab Brooke’s hand in hers. “But if it  _ does _ happen,” she started again, excitement bubbling out of her voice, “then I want you to know that I will support you no matter who they are. Boy, girl, either, none of the above - I love you no matter what.”

“ _ Mooomm, _ ” Brooke whined, embarrassed. She made a great show of rolling her eyes, but secretly it made her feel warm to know she’d have her mother’s support no matter what happened.

But she just smiled again, squeezing Brooke’s hand. “C’mon, honey, we should go. I’ll drop you off on my way to work.”

 

And so Brooke had been left at the big, scary doors and stared up at the big, scary windows, and eventually she had taken those big, scary steps into the building. Five minutes later she’s up on the third floor, trying to navigate herself to homeroom without much success.

She looks down at the schedule in her hand, crumpled from the millions of foldings and unfoldings, double-checking the room number of her very first class. Homeroom, technically, but whatever. She needs to get herself to room 335 in the next - she glances down at her watch - one minute, holy crap, or else it won’t matter what the hell she’s late for. She’ll be  _ late.  _ And she’s pretty sure the teachers at Middleborough Middle (she knows!!!)  aren’t quite as forgiving as the ones back at her old elementary school. It’s not her fault their school is a freaking maze!

The door in front of her says 330, then the one next to it 328, so the room she’s looking for must be down the  hall, so-

_ Holy crap. Holy fudging crap. Holy crap!  _ There’s a girl down the hall, and her jacket is pink.

Her jacket. is  _ pink. _

Her jacket is flippin’ pink! Brooke can see the colour pink! She gasps, throwing a hand over her mouth as she dives behind a corner. Wait, why did she do that? This girl was her soulmate! Brooke should be running  _ towards  _ her, not away from her! She giggles to herself, eyes catching the hem of her cardigan - yellow, it’s yellow! - as she pulls herself up from the ground. Good thing no one else is in the hall to see this, or else she’d be crowned the queen of crazy on her first day.

When she rounds the corner, the girl is gone. Brooke’s grin drops momentarily but then she remembers - this is a happy day! She saw her soulmate. She goes to the school, and Brooke will absolutely see her again, and she’ll see  _ Brooke,  _ and they’ll get married on the spot. Okay, maybe not that last part, but a girl can dream. 

She fishes her phone out of her cardigan pocket, pulling up her and her mom’s text conversation as she floats down to room 335, final bell ringing through the empty hallway.

 

**To: mom**

_ MUM!!!!!!!!! _

_ I CAN SEE ALL THE COLOURS!!!!!!!!! _

_ I LOVE PINK!!!!! _

 

**From: mom**

_ Honey, that’s amazing!  _

_ I am so happy for you!  _

 

**To: mom**

♥♥♥♥♥

 

**From: mom**

_ I can’t wait to hear all about it! Now, get to class! We can chat when you get home.  _ ♥

 

-

 

Chloe’s almost afraid to scan the class. All the boys she’d seen in the hall - none of them the one, obviously, since her nails, tapping away on her desk, were still a dull shade of grey - had looked weird and farty. Don’t get her wrong; she knew that the boys her age wouldn’t instantly turn into prince charmings the day they made it to middle school, but  _ jeez _ . She didn’t think they’d still be this bad. Weren’t boys supposed to shoot up and fill out and turn beautiful the Summer before sixth grade? Or was that ninth? Whatever year it’s supposed to be, these boys had clearly missed the memo.

Despite her disappointment up until this point, Chloe is still hopeful. There’d already been one couple that had their moment just minutes earlier - who’s to say there couldn’t be a second pairing that morning?

Looking at this group of boys, Chloe’s not sure she wants there to be. Using her peripherals, (p-e-r-i-p-h-e-r-a-l-s.  _ That  _ word had lost her the spelling bee last year to some loser kid named Michael. She hadn’t forgotten it since.) Chloe slyly scans the row of desks next to her, peering at her new classmates. There is not one dreamy thing about any of these boys.

Sighing, she leans back into her chair - the kind that’s attached to the desk, which is  _ weird.  _ Her prince charming will show up someday, she assures herself.  _ When he comes, it will all be worth the wait.  _ Her mother’s voice echoes in her head.  _ Your prince will come riding up on the back of some beautiful horse, and he’ll sweep you off to some faraway land.  _ But of course, Chloe’s allergic to horses.

Then, another bell rings, bringing Chloe back to reality. End of homeroom, she supposes. It feels kind of pointless to rush to a classroom just to leave ten minutes later, but she starts packing up her things anyway, stacking her (supposedly) colourful notebooks on top of one another. 

When she looks up, most of the class has filed out, save for Chloe herself and another girl, back turned, speaking to their homeroom teacher in a soft voice. Chloe makes out the words “maze” and “thanks” before she stops breathing.

The girl’s sweater is the brightest yellow she’s ever seen. Hell, it’s the  _ only  _ yellow she’s ever seen. Right now it feels like the only thing Chloe  _ can  _ see. Bright yellow like the happiness radiating from inside, blonde - blonde? that must be it - hair hanging loosely over the girl’s shoulders, swinging softly as she giggles and it’s - Chloe’s mom would kill her for this but holy  _ shit _ , a laugh like pure  _ gold  _ just bubbling up and out of the girl. 

Oh. 

Shit. 

_ Girl. _

Chloe bolts out of the room before the girl can turn. 

 

Her books hit the floor of the bathroom stall and Chloe immediately climbs onto the top of the toilet, folding her legs into her chest. Her new jeans are touching the grody porcelain, but her heart is beating so fast that she couldn’t care less. She tries to process everything that just happened. That’s  _ happening. _

Her prince charming’s a… princess charming. A girl! Chloe had never even  _ considered  _ the possibility that her soulmate may be a girl. As long as she could remember, her mom had been lilting on about the day Chloe would bring home her future husband. She’d never been too enchanted by the whole wedding thing herself, but her mom was practically obsessed with it. Although. Seeing that golden girl in a white ball gown? Chloe has to muffle the excited giggles that pour out of her, heart about to burst. 

Her soulmate is a girl, and that’s that. And after a couple long, deep breaths, Chloe is pretty sure she’s okay with that. 

 

She doesn’t see the girl again before lunch period, despite Chloe’s more-than-elaborate searching. Seriously, every flash of yellow induces another heart attack. Chloe’s okay with it, though - that only gave her more time to prepare for their actual meeting. And seeing the world - well, the inside of the school - in a whole new way isn’t so terrible of a time killer either. She barely pays attention in any of her classes, leaving a bad first impression on her new teachers, no doubt, but Chloe can’t find it in herself to care. 

Chalkboards aren’t actually black, it’s this deep rich colour, which is kind of weird but also kind of nice. The tile floors are too, but a different kind - she thinks her toothpaste might match. Green, then? She spends her remaining three periods just staring at different things, trying to commit their colours to memory. The bright, abrupt shade of the spelling bee kid’s hoodie. She remembers scraping her knee once at recess, the liquid bubbling out of it matching the boy’s sweater. Red. Chloe decides she likes red, loud and eye-catching. 

French - her last class before the freedom of lunch - is spent categorizing the colours, objects of reference noted in the margins of her worksheet. Blue: the sky, Jake Dillinger’s water bottle, the ink of her pen. Red: the sweater, blood, her nail polish. Green: grass, the tile floors, the sound of chalk tapping against the board. She knows there’s about a billion iterations of each colour, every variation her eyes fall upon a new, unique shade, each more beautiful or rich or muted than the last. Some of them even come through in sounds and smells, floating sometimes close and sometimes far away in her vision, distinct shapes and textures. Still, everything so far pales in comparison to  _ her. _

Chloe’s heart leaps into her throat when the bell rings (purple). She doesn’t waste a moment shoving her books into her locker, shedding her pink - same shade as the case on her phone, a really pleasant sight actually - jacket and grabbing her lunch bag.

If there was a world record for most stairs descended in ten seconds, Chloe just beat it. She lets the crowd carry her to the cafeteria, bouncing on her toes. Taking a deep breath, reminding herself to play it cool. This girl, soulmate or not, definitely wasn’t gonna like her if Chloe acted like a bumbling fool.  _ Put your head up. Stop slouching. Act like a lady.  _ Chloe repeats the mantra to herself as she strolls down the first aisle, eyes peeled for that yellow sweater. 

Her eyes fall on it easily, and before she knows it, Chloe is marching up to the table and sitting down from across the girl.

“Hi, my name is Chloe and I think we should be friends.”

 

It’s later that night that the euphoria of the day comes to a halt. Chloe crashes into her house, dropping her bag at the entrance and practically sprinting to the kitchen. 

“Mom,” she breathes, falling into a chair, smiling wide. “I saw my soulmate.”

Her mother’s face breaks into a smile, perfect white teeth exposed. “Oh, Chloe!” she says, putting down her knife but not moving from her spot at the island. “That’s just wonderful. I told you he’d come along if you just waited.”

Chloe’s breath catches in her throat for just a second, because,  _ oh.  _ Right. “Haha, yeah,” she laughs nervously, suddenly filled up with fear instead of elation. 

“Posture, Chloe,” her mother chides,  _ tsk _ ing as she resumes her chopping. Chloe sits up, pulling her shoulders down. Her eyes start to burn.

A beat passes and her mother looks up again, smile returning, yet perhaps not quite as wide. “So, who’s the lucky boy?” she asks, voice saccharine sweet.

_ Her name is Brooke, and she might be an angel.  _ “Oh, I don’t actually know,” Chloe says smoothly, surprising herself. “it happened when I walked into class, it could be anyone.”

Her mother hums appreciatively, moving to the sink to wash another carrot. “That happens. I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, honey.” 

Chloe lets out a deep sigh, as silently as she can. A text pops up on her screen. It’s from Brooke, confirming their plans to get frozen yogurt that Friday night. 

“Chloe?”

“What?” she blinks up at her mother, an expectant look on the woman’s face. She sighs, closing her eyes.

“ _ Pardon,  _ and I said, ‘is everything alright’?” Her hands are on her hips, tendons in her hands stretched tight. 

Chloe swallows. “Yeah, I just…” she trails off. Ice cream emojis fill her screen. 

“Don’t mumble, Chloe,” her mother sighs, going back to her chopping.

Deep breath. “What if my soulmate wasn’t a boy?”

The knife clatters to the counter and Chloe can feel the air leave her body. Something dark crawls into her chest and roots itself into her lungs.

Her mother’s voice is absolutely calm. “Chloe Marie Valentine,” she says, lips pulled tight like she’d just downed a mouthful of lemon juice, “your soulmate is a boy.” She looks Chloe dead in the eye, and something in her dies right there and then. A second passes in utter silence until her mother goes right back to chopping up her vegetables again, each slice hitting the cutting board with a deafening, fatal  _ thwack.  _

Well. Chloe supposes that that’s that, then. 

 

-

 

“Holy crap, that’s incredible,” Chloe mumbles softly, so soft that Brooke wouldn’t have been able to pick it up had she not been glued to her best friend’s side. They’re sitting on Brooke’s couch, side-by-side.

_ Mad Max  _ is playing on the screen in front of them, flashing brilliant yellow sandscapes and bright blue skies, stretching out for miles and miles above the chase currently taking place. It’s one of her favourite movies, so bright and exploding with colour. And kickass women on a kickass car chase, but that’s beside the point.

“It really is,” Brooke whispers back, because she doesn’t want to disturb the aura of absolute awe that’s coming off of her best friend right now.  _ Best friend.  _ Brooke’s stomach does a tiny backflip, equal parts excitement and guilt. 

“Can you… can you tell me about the colours?”

Brooke exhales shakily. This was starting to happen more often, and each and every time it was the way Chloe asked it that just kills her. The unsureness of it, like she wasn’t certain she’d even understand it, anyway. The sheer  _ vulnerability  _ of her voice, something Brooke had learned did not come easily for Chloe. Then the sadness, coating everything like a shiny varnish, unmistakable. 

The sadness is really the twist of the knife that’s already lodged in Brooke’s gut. 

Chloe doesn’t see colour yet. Hasn’t met her soulmate. Brooke met hers over a year ago, on the first day of sixth grade. And that person is sitting right next to her, asking Brooke to describe the colours she can’t see. 

Yeah, that knife is definitely being twisted. 

She’d gone over it a million times. Her soulmate was -  _ is _ \-  a girl with dark hair and a light pink jacket - that’s all Brooke had really seen before she dove around the corner that morning. As much as she tries to conjure up more details from that short glance, those are the only two things of which she’s completely sure. She also knows that Chloe is a girl with dark hair and a light pink jacket. It’s so,  _ so  _ easy - almost too easy - to just put her into the memory of that day, but Brooke has to be careful. She doesn’t know for sure. It could have been anyone. Hell, it could have been a guy. Who’s to say pink is just for girls?

All gender speculation aside, Brooke does know one thing for damn well sure. She knows that the world is more vivid around Chloe. More alive, colours mixing and melding into the most saturated versions of themselves like a halo around the girl, pulsating, radiating brilliance with every breath she takes. The rest of the world almost -  _ almost  _ \- seems dull in comparison.

So yeah, she doesn’t know for sure, but. She knows. Really, she knows.

“Even I can tell that they’re amazing.” Chloe’s voice brings Brooke reeling back into reality, spiral of self-doubt unspiralling with the soft lilt of her best friend’s words. The sadness is still there, deep green. Like a pine tree. It’s not a good colour on Chloe, and especially not one Brooke likes to hear tinting the girl’s words.

She blinks, remembering Chloe’s original request, and starts talking animatedly. “Oh, Chlo, it’s so  _ rich _ ,” she starts, feeling a jolt go through her at her friend’s now smiling face. “The sky is so blue - almost aqua, like with a little tiny bit of green or yellow or something mixed in.” She wishes it could flood out of the screen and drown Chloe’s sadness away. “And the yellow - like my cardigan-” she interrupts herself, squeezing her arm out from under Chole’s to flap the panels of the old knitted thing around, “-is just insane. That’s the sand. It’s so yellow - but sometimes it’s kind of orange or reddish? Like, like…” she trails off, snapping her fingers as Chloe giggles. Her heart lights up. “Like Rebecca L’s fake tan! It looks just like that!” she yells, dissolving into laughter herself as she sees the comparison in her mind. It’s not half bad. 

All of Chloe’s perfect and perfectly white (seriously, not an inkling of yellow, and Brooke would know, she’d see it) teeth are out, smile stretched wide across her face. Between gasping breaths, she manages, “Yeah, I knew something looked kinda off with her,” and it sends them both back into a fit of giggles, so deterring that Brooke has to grope for the remote and pause the movie.

 

It’s moments like these that make Brooke almost think it’s alright if she’s broken. 

Almost. 

-

 

_ “So, have you seen your soulmate yet?” Brooke asks at lunch that day, leaning onto her elbows with all wiggling eyebrows and pursed lips. _

_ Chloe immediately tastes bile in her throat and looks down, using every ounce of facial strength to keep the corners of her mouth from dipping. Deep breath. She’d rehearsed this each night for the past three days, each day since she met Brooke. “No,” she says sadly, surprising herself at how even it came out. “not yet, I guess,” she sighs, looking down at her very pink nails. _

_ If she’d glanced up just a split second later she would have missed the look on the girl’s face. There’s really only one word to describe it: crushed. A tiny flare of confusion goes up in the back of Chloe’s mind, but she pushes it aside and recommits to looking sad and wistful.  _

_ “O-oh, that’s - that’s too bad,” Brooke stutters out, playing with the hem of her sleeve. Her cardigan - which Chloe is yet to see her knew friend without, strangely - is the same stunning yellow she’d first seen in French class.  _ Grey _ , Chloe corrects herself mentally. She has to ignore the colours if she doesn’t want Brooke finding out her secret. She’d decided the previous day that it was better to ignore them altogether. Maybe the feelings would fade eventually, too. _

_ “Chloe, did you hear me?” Brooke is staring up at her, big blue -  _ grey,  _ chloe tells herself,  _ they’re grey  _ \- eyes wide and full of concern. _

_ Chloe blinks a few times and clears her throat. “Sorry, what did you say?” _

_ “I said not to worry because whoever your soulmate is, they’ll find you soon enough,” she offers it with a smile and a hand reached out, clasping on top of Chloe’s.  _

_ “I guess so,” Chloe mumbles, not paying attention to what she’s saying because her hand is on fire - no, it’s melting, it’s been launched into the sun and soon there will be nothing left. It takes everything in her not to reintroduce her lunch to the table. She screws her eyes shut, taking the heat. She can’t pull her hand away first, because then Brooke will know that something is  _ wrong  _ even though it’s not just something it’s  _ everything  _ and Chloe’s not sure she can really take it much longer because- _

_ “Chlo?” Brooke lifts her hand up and away, eyes squinting slightly. “Are you alright?” _

_ Her head snaps up, hand still simmering. “Yeah, I’m - have you seen yours?” Not the best change of topic, but still. She leans her chin onto her hands, ready to listen as if she didn’t just get irradiated by hand-kind-of-holding. _

_ Brooke gets this sort of sad look on her face, but just for a second. “Yeah!” she says enthusiastically, smiling. Chloe lets her mouth fall open into a surprised smile and claps her hands together excitedly - god, it almost scares her how easy it is to lie. Brooke, oblivious, just rolls her eyes. “I don’t know who it is, though,” she adds, smile not quite as big as before.  _

_ “When you were young?” Chloe asks, wishing desperately. For what, she’s not entirely sure.  _

_ “No, no, like, this week. When I, uh - when I walked into the hall it was a big crowd and it just happened.” _

_ Both utterly crushing relief and utterly crushing sadness pour out of Chloe. She’s not sure which one hurts more. “Damn.” _

_ “Yeah, coulda been anyone, really.” Brooke shrugs, then takes a bite of her wrap like it’s the most casual thing in the word. _

_ Chloe takes the silence as an opportunity to do the same, even though eating is the last thing on the list of things she’d rather be doing right now. (a special sneak peek at that list, in no particular order: listing off every colour in the universe, screaming at her mother, touching the sun with her bare hands) But she takes a tiny bite anyway, revelling in the small solace of Brooke accepting her story without any suspicion. It churns her stomach to think of that as a success, but still. It’s the little things.  _

_ “So, do you like movies?” Brooke asks suddenly, and Chloe feels herself falling. _

  
  


Chloe shudders at the memory of that day. Even after it’s millionth replaying in her head, it doesn’t feel less bad. That’s the only word to describe it,  _ bad.  _ Just draping over everything in her like a film of unease, seething into every pore of her being. It adorns the branches in her lungs, practically a living thing on their own, now. Or at least it feels like that. This thing inside of her controls her, pouring guilt and shame into every breath she takes. 

And it’s getting harder to breathe, lately.

Her mother has retreated a bit, at least.  _ Finally.  _ It had been over two years since that frigid conversation in the kitchen took place, the day paranoia seeped into both Valentine women and never truly let them go. The day Chloe met Brooke. The day all the lies came into play, becoming as much of a part of Chloe as her affinity for applying nail polish.

That  _ fucking  _ day. Nearly three years, now that Chloe thinks about it, have gone by. In just a few months she’ll be entering the ninth grade with her best friend at her side, and  _ just  _ now has Chloe’s mother stopped spitefully insinuating that  _ best friend  _ was code for something else. 

It had taken a lot of mani-pedi trips and shopping days, but Chloe had seemed to finally convince her mother that she wasn’t a closet lesbian. Because she’s not. She’s not, she’s not, she’s not. Chloe Valentine likes boys. (Chloe Valentine repeats that to herself each night like a mantra, until it loses all meaning. She whispers it like a prayer.)

The point is, things are finally going back to normal. Chloe feels like just maybe she can deal - she has a mother that loves her again, the best friend she could ever ask for, and a whole new school to conquer. Life couldn’t be better, it really couldn’t. 

(That’s a lie, but Chloe supposes that’s her thing. She’s living one, anyway.)

  
  


**From: brookie**

_ girlie _

_ i’m BORED _

_ gilmore girls in 20? _

 

Chloe smiles as the texts light up her phone. She’s lounging on her bed, head hanging upside down off the edge. She abandons her copy of  _ Honours English Preparation  _ and grabs her phone, slowly sliding backwards off the bed as she types frantically.

 

**To: brookie**

_ Yeesssss _

 

**From: brookie**

_ finish your chapter first tho _

_ dont want Mrs. V raging on me bc u cant rmr how to write a proper haiku _

;) ;)

 

**To: brookie**

_ Oh my god _

_ 5 7 5, has to be about nature  _

_ Are you satisfied? _

 

She rolls her eyes, flipping over so she’s sitting upright on her bedroom floor. Her mother had been going pretty heavy on the whole academics thing. Chloe had managed to get high 90s in all three years of middle school for English, so obviously her mother took that as a sign that Chloe’s genius needed to be preserved. In the form of boring prep books, apparently.

 

**From: brookie**

_ 9/10 u got it but im deducting a point for bein rude _ :’(

 

**To: brookie**

_ I’m HURT _

 

**From: brookie**

_ shh u love me anyway babe _

_ can u bring snacks  _

_ im too comfy too get up :0 _

_ also just walk in its not locked lol _

 

Sighing, Chloe stands and gathers her textbooks, piling them neatly on her desk. She sends off a quick  _ Sure thing  _ before sliding her phone into her hoodie pocket, stretching her arms up high. She’s grown to ignore the little flutter she feels in her chest when she sees the familiar  _ babe  _ on her screen - Brooke calls everyone babe, it’s her thing now apparently - and she does it particularly well as she pads down the hall, descending the stairs quietly. 

She’s almost made it to the pantry unscathed when her mother materializes from thin air. 

“Are you going out?” she asks, tone neutral enough. “In  _ that _ ?” she adds a second later, eyeing Chloe’s pajama short/hoodie combo.  _ Ah, there it is,  _ Chloe thinks sweetly to herself.

“Yeah, just to Brooke’s. We’re watching Gilmore Girls!” She focuses on making her voice light and happy. Light and happy girls didn’t have secret feelings for their best friends. “Is that alright?” she adds a moment later, for good measure.

Her mother considers, rolling her lips together in a thin line. “I suppose so. I always liked that show when it was airing,” she says, laughing a little bit.

Chloe warms a bit and lets herself laugh too, if not nervously. “Yeah, it’s good.”

“Have you finished your reading for today?” her mother says suddenly, any warmth from the moment before completely sapped. 

Chloe nods. She knew this was coming. “Yes, I did two chapters, so I’m halfway through the poetry unit now,” she says, letting out a little sigh of relief as her mother’s face softens into something resembling a smile. 

“Good. Have a good night.”

“Thanks mom, I will.”

She’s halfway out the door, bag of chips under her arm, when her mother’s voice calls out again. “Are you planning on staying the night?”

Chloe freezes. “Uh, I’m not sure?” 

“I think I’d like you home tonight.”

“Y-yeah, sure, mom.” Chloe internally scolds herself for the break in her voice, and turns back to give her mom a last smile - forced, but still a smile - before heading outside, into the warmth of the sun. 

 

-

 

“Stop! It looks so bad!”

They’re lying on Brooke’s bed, yearbooks strewn across the covers in front of them. Each one is flipped to the page with their class photo for the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Brooke covers her own picture from the seventh grade, laughing as Chloe tries to rip her hand away.

“God, for someone so little you’re a lot stronger than I’d expect,” Chloe laughs, giving up on pulling Brooke’s wrist and resting her head on it instead. 

“Oh, shut up,” Brooke says lamely, unable to find a better way to say  _ holy shit I’m still in love with you after all these years.  _ She pats the top of Chloe’s head softly, smiling to herself. It’s nice to see her best friend acting silly for once. It’d been a while.

“You know I’m gonna see it eventually, right?” Chloe mumbles, cheek still pressed into the top of Brooke’s hand. “I’m gonna go home tomorrow morning and get out my own yearbook and look at it and-”

“-and snapchat me really bad close-ups of it?”

“Exactly.” Chloe smiles, lifting one of Brooke’s fingers to sneak a look at the photo. “God, remember when you used to wear that cardigan every single day?”

“Oh, don’t remind me,” she groans, rolling over and taking the book with her, holding it close to her chest. “I just loved it so much. I found it in my mom’s closet the day before sixth grade and forced her to let me wear it.” She giggles now, remembering how little she’d actually washed her favourite cardigan back then. 

“I always loved that cardigan,” Chloe says, nudging Brooke with her knee. “You don’t wear it enough anymore.”

“It has holes now! Actual holes!” She lets out a sigh, mourning the old thing. “Anyway,” she says after a moment of wistful silence, rolling her eyes. She sits up and closes the yearbook, tossing it behind her, ignoring Chloe’s adorable squeak of dismay. 

“Anyway, we need to figure out who your soulmate is,” Chloe decides, sitting up and crossing her legs. She pulls the one from sixth grade onto her lap, scanning the page. 

“ _ Chlo _ ,” Brooke whines, wishing she’d drop it. Chloe had always been really taken by the concept of finding out who Brooke’s soulmate was - probably because she hadn’t yet met her own - and while it was sweet that she cared so much, it always made Brooke a little more than uneasy to talk about. Chloe really had no idea, and as the years went by, it had become clear that Brooke’s feelings were not returned. That she was  _ broken _ . 

“Shh, they’re probably on this page,” Chloe says, not looking up. She shuts her eyes suddenly, lifting her finger comically high and letting it land randomly on the page. Brooke tries not to notice how she avoids the bottom right corner -  _ Turner, Valentine, Vo.  _

“Chl-”

“Jeremy Heere!” she announces triumphantly, smiling before squinting down at the page. “Wow, he’s fucking pale.”

Brooke snorts. “He’s tall now,” she offers, shrugging.

“Perfect!” Chloe smiles wide, but there’s something missing. She clasps her hands together. “He’s tall, you’re short. It’s cute. Date him.”

“What?”

“Date him! Why not?” Chloe quirks an eyebrow, handing the book over to Brooke. Jeremy’s picture grimaces up at her. “He could be the one,” she adds, just as Brooke’s eyes wander over to Chloe’s portrait. 

_ Ha. If you only knew.  _ “I can’t  _ date  _ him,” she says shyly. Despite the, uh,  _ other  _ issues, Brooke’s never even talked to this Jeremy kid. 

“Jenna told me he sees colours too,” Chloe says matter of factly, leaning onto her side. “Doesn’t know who his soulmate is!”

She allows herself to entertain the idea, for Chloe’s sake. “Maybe,” she says finally, giggling, because really everything about this is just so  _ funny _ . Chloe smiles and Brooke feels warmth spreading in her chest, bright pink. She’d marry the kid if she got to see her best friend smile like this.

  
  


How Brooke ends up in Jeremy Heere’s basement on a Thursday night, passing a joint back and forth, she has no goddamned idea. 

 

She supposes it started a month ago, when she’d marched up to him obviously still on some sort of power trip from seeing  _ Wonder Woman  _ the night before, telling more than asking him if he wanted to hang out sometime. 

“I, uh, what?” he’d stuttered, turning an impressively bright shade of red as Brooke stood in front of him.

“Let’s hang out! You and me, after school tomorrow.” When he’d just opened his mouth and stuttered some more, Brooke had rolled her eyes, softening a bit. “Come on, we can get frozen yogurt. If anything, I can be your ride home.”

“Oh, uh, sure, okay, Brooke,” he’d said, pausing between literally every word. Brooke had a little bit of sympathy; she’d never even so much as looked at Jeremy and now she was asking him out. She could see from his facial journey that he was still trying to process as she ripped a page out of her notebook, scribbling her number on it and shoving it into his hands. 

“See you tomorrow!” She’d said as cheerily as possible, hoping she didn’t sound insane.

 

The next day had passed in a whirlwind of colours: dark green and peachy orange, swirling in the pit of Brooke’s stomach; deep turquoise rumours, flying from the lips of one student to another; a muted pink, radiating from Chloe’s short-lived smiles, tinged with a frosty blue, nearly white. Before Brooke knew it she was leaning against a picnic bench on the west side of the school, scrolling through her text messages.

 

**From: chlo chlo**

_ Okay so have fun on your date _

_ Use protection please _

_ And I expect a FULL rundown afterwards I’ll be waiting xoxo _

 

Brooke snorted, rolling her eyes. She replied with a smile on her face.

 

**To: chlo chlo**

_ ewwwwwwwwwwwwww chlo _

_ im not gonna bang him on our first date _

_ i almost called him jerry today i dont think were There yet  _

 

**From: chlo chlo**

_ Hmm sounds fake _

_ anyway FULL rundown _

;) ;) ;0

 

She huffed a sigh, exiting out of her conversation with Chloe and clicking on Jeremy’s name. His text was from two minutes ago. She didn’t know much about the guy so she’d just stuck to keeping his contact as his name. Boring, but safe.

 

**From: jeremy**

_ Sorry i got held up in Reyes’s last period but im on my way now! _

 

**To: jeremy**

_ okay, no worries! :) :) _

_ im at the picnic tables by the way!! _

 

She sent off the reply quickly, setting her phone down on the table afterwards. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, going out with Jeremy. He was cute, that was for sure. Chloe didn’t think so ( _ he looks kind of like a gazelle, B. _ ) but Brooke kind of liked his beanpole-esque figure, and she definitely liked his big blue eyes. They matched his colours, soft aquas and rich indigos practically seeping out of him. Brooke could do blue. 

Not much later, Jeremy appeared from around the corner, smiling nervously as he gripped the straps of his backpack, walking toward Brooke.  _ Oh, he really is like a gazelle,  _ she thought, giggling to herself. 

“Hi,” he said, stopping a couple feet in front of the table, clearly unsure. Brooke stood, smiling.

“Hi,” she parroted, fishing her keys out of her pocket. 

She could do blue.

 

As it turns out, Brooke actually could do blue. She’s grown to like the colour quite more than she expected. Jeremy, too. Somehow, his awkwardness had ended up being really sweet, his genuine interest in Brooke and her life endearing. It’s not something she would describe as true love or really anything near it, but she enjoys the time they spend together. 

A month goes by without any real struggle or noting of the time. He starts to feel familiar, a part of her everyday life now. He walks her to class, their hands swinging between them as they travel the halls. The gossip dies down and people start caring about other, newer rumours. Brooke meets Jeremy’s best friend, Michael. They don’t really interact, but she likes him well enough. (and he seems to at least tolerate her, which is nice.) 

She still spends time with Chloe. She gets harder to read each and every day. When Brooke brings up Jeremy, she’ll get this sad kind of look on her face for just a second, then feign indifference.  _ Could she be upset because  _ she  _ wants to be the one with me?  _ Brooke doesn’t let herself entertain the possibility for more than a second. It’s not possible; Brooke is dysfunctional when it comes to the soulmate thing, and Chloe hasn’t met hers yet. It’s not possible.

Still, she has to will herself to ignore the flutter deep in her stomach with each puzzling look. It’s ignorance and maybe it’s stupid, but it’s safe. Having a boyfriend is safe - hell, it may even fix her. It might not fix the rift that’s slowly growing between her and her best friend, but maybe a bit of space would do the both of them good. 

Besides, she likes Jeremy. She likes driving aimlessly around town with him after school, laughing over random nonsense and yelling at slow drivers. She likes seeing him grow more comfortable with her, easing out of his shell until he’s unrecognizable from the stammering mess he transforms into at school. She likes kissing him. She likes holding his hand. She likes their movie nights - turns out Jeremy was just as big a movie fan as Brooke (much to her mom’s delight) and had already introduced her to several kickass series. Who knew  _ Star Wars  _ was actually cool? Brooke likes  _ Star Wars.  _ Brooke likes Jeremy.

 

The two of them are sitting in the parking lot of Pinkberry, empty cups sitting on the dashboard. It’d been a particularly rough day for the both of them: Brooke absolutely bombed her precalc test and Jeremy’s anxiety had skyrocketed because of a mandatory solo oral presentation in English.

Neither of them speak for several minutes, just staring straight ahead in a semi-comfortable silence. Brooke thinks about how she’d blown off helping Chloe prepare for the very same presentation (discussion on major themes in Shakespheare’s  _ Julius Caesar _ ) so she could study for precalc. But she hadn’t studied, and she hadn’t really planned on studying either. The frozen yogurt churns inside of her stomach like acid.

Brooke is the first to speak, and the words that come out of her mouth are not the ones she’d expected. “Wanna get high?”

Jeremy just looks at her as his jaw goes slack, eyes bulging. After a couple of seconds he shuts his mouth abruptly and smiles, shaking his head. “You’re kind of awesome.”

“Oh, I know.”

 

Fast forward thirty minutes and the two of them are sitting on either side of Jeremy’s couch, smoke clouding the air between them. Jeremy leans into the arm of the couch, legs stretched lazily out in front of him. Brooke’s knees are curled in, resting slightly on his ankles. Jeremy reaches out his arm, offering the joint which Brooke gladly takes, inhaling deeply. 

“Okay, so you’ve obviously done this before, right?” Jeremy asks, blinking over at his girlfriend. “‘Cause, like, you’re not allowed to be that good if it’s your first time.”

Brooke snorts, blowing the smoke slowly in his direction. “Not my first rodeo, Jeremy.” She doesn’t know why she says that and ends up laughing at her dumb choice of words. The giddy feeling quickly fades, though, and she sighs slightly, knowing exactly what kind of high this was going to be.

“Chloe too?” Jeremy raises an eyebrow, clearly doubting that her best friend would participate in anything drug-related. He laughs at Brooke’s sudden snort, her eyes widening with her eyebrows drawn down low together. “Yeah, didn’t think so,” he laughs, letting his palm fall facing upwards on her knee.

Brooke hands him the joint, watching as he brings it up to his lips. His eyes fall shut and for just a second, he looks peaceful. “So how is she doing? Chloe?” he asks, tearing Brooke from her quiet fascination. It takes her a second to register the actual question before she lets out a low laugh, leaning into the soft back of the couch.

“She’s, uh…” She lets herself trail off, deciding how to answer. Jeremy just waits, eyes falling softly on her, almost sympathetic. How  _ is  _ Chloe? Brooke can feel the high starting to hit her, the soft lavender haze ready to coat her current existence. “She’s pretty icy,” she starts, a short laugh escaping her lips, not a trace of humour. Jeremy’s pupils are wide and he nods slightly, encouraging Brooke to continue, the faintest hint of a frown on his face. 

“It’s not like it used to be. I guess it’s been gradual, but. She feels kind of far, if that makes sense? We don’t, uh. We don’t click quite as much anymore. Things feel different.”

“That can be scary. You guys have been friends for a long time,” Jeremy offers softly. Brooke smiles slightly, taking the joint and inhaling until she thinks she’s going to explode. She holds it until Jeremy’s face starts to blur and then gasps quietly, eyes burning. 

“I don’t know how to fix it. I can feel that something’s wrong. With her, I mean. Something’s wrong but she’s put it away, like, top shelf or something. I can’t reach her, and it’s killing me. It’s killing us, and I don’t think I can do anything to stop it.”

She wipes at her eyes, not caring at this point if there are actual tears or they’re just stinging from the smoke. 

“Y’know, she’s always been pink, right? From the moment I saw her. Explosion of pink. But now there’s this icy kind of blue - not you blue, you blue is the best blue - it’s creeping in and it’s taking her away, Jeremy. She’s getting so far away.” 

Brooke is crying in earnest now and Jeremy leans forward, joint forgotten on the coffee table. He takes her hand, holding it with both of his and bringing it close to his chest. They sit like that in silence for a few minutes, soaking away in the colour of it all. Lavender. Indigo. Deep, forest green.

Another minute passes before Jeremy speaks quietly. “It’s her, isn’t it?” 

Brooke can’t move, can’t speak. The reality of it floods over her, brilliant pink washing through her mind until the room is tinted in shades of rose. She opens her mouth and nothing comes out, but she realizes that nothing has to, because Jeremy just smiles.

“It’s Michael. For me, I mean.”

And then they both burst out into laughter - honest to god, genuine, stomach-clutching  _ laughter.  _ Maybe it’s the pot and maybe it’s the outright fucking ridiculousness of the situation, of their entire goddamned lives, but then again maybe it’s just because they’re two kids sitting in a basement, helplessly in love but not with each other. 

Their hysteria subsides after an eternity, and Brooke feels like she might burst, Jeremy looking at her with the fondest look she’d seen in all her sixteen and a half years - the happiest she’d seen him in all of their past month together.

“Look at us,” she says, sighing deeply as the happy moment passes. 

Jeremy seems to sense it too, because the smile falls from his face just as easily as it had appeared. “She doesn’t see the colours,” he realizes out loud. Brooke had mentioned it in passing once. He looks crushed, actually deflating. 

_ Tell me about it,  _ Brooke thinks. She just nods, though, sighing again. “It’s okay,” she says, more for Jeremy than herself. She’d long since accepted it, the thought of it bringing her less panic than bitterness at this point. Silence falls over them again, Jeremy rubbing small circles into Brooke’s palm.

“What about him?” she asks then, looking up. Michael was Jeremy’s best friend. Was he broken, too?

“It’s, uh,” Jeremy can’t meet Brooke’s gaze, focusing instead on the floor. He bites his lip and laughs bitterly, all burnt orange. “It’s complicated,” he says, and Brooke’s heart just shatters. She wants to know, to  _ help,  _ but she can feel it’s not the right time to pry. Jeremy just picks up the joint again, relighting it and giving Brooke the saddest smile she’s ever seen. 

They pass it back and forth a few more times until they’re well past high, not moving from the couch. 

“Hey, Jeremy?” Brooke almost jolts at the sound of her own voice, breaking the silence once again. He looks up, eyes red and blue and maybe just about every colour in between.

“Thanks.”

 

-

 

It’s rare that Chloe doesn’t feel like she’s drowning these days.

There’s a small footbridge hanging over the gap between her and Brooke, one that Chloe seems to be scrambling to repair constantly despite having been the one to wear it down herself. It’s like a constant back-and-forth struggle from one cliff to the other, but she always somehow ends up stranded in the middle, unable to just. Remove herself completely or ditch the act altogether. 

She doesn’t know which one terrifies her more.

There’s perks to staying in the middle, though. Sometimes it’s like this blissful sort of limbo, not entirely here or there and she’s able to breathe, if not just for a second. But then other times it dips dangerously low, settling Chloe just under the surface, suffocating. Drowning. 

She thinks she might be starting to learn how to breathe underwater. 

She’s still trying, at least. If she can claw back up one way or another, she does. She’s not quite at the point where she’s ready to start hacking at the ropes, but she’d be kidding herself if she said it wasn’t there in the foreseeable future.

So yeah, trying. She makes two coffees each morning in carefully sealed to-go cups, one for her and one for Brooke. It started in the tenth grade, back when Brooke finally found a brand that she’d actually liked. Chloe bought the special cups to go in her mom’s fancy machine the next afternoon, and had prepared one each morning since.

And if the action feels empty, now, with the gap and the bridge and all that, then Chloe ignores the sensation each morning, profusely. She’s not ready to slice that rope just yet.

She’d always liked her coffee black, just like her mother, but she’s found herself putting more and more sugar in, as if she adds enough sweetness it’ll take away the slick bitter feeling that settles under her skin every time she looks at her best friend.

Still, there are moments. Moments where the interactions with her don’t feel forced or robotic or just utterly uncomfortable. Short fleeting seconds where deleting herself from life isn’t the first thought after saying something to Brooke. 

Moments where she can almost feel the sun on her skin, see it’s invisible rays melting the fortress she’d so carefully built around herself. Moments where she can just exist without making sure she checks a dozen boxes first, moments that are just that. Moments.

It’s one of these moments when everything comes crashing down.

 

**From: brookie**

_ I KNOW WE SAID NO SPOILERS _

_ AND IM NOT G O NN A _

_ BUT CHLO YOU HAVE TO CATCH UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIKE RIGHT NOW !!!!!!! _

 

She’s sitting at the kitchen counter, homework spread out in front of her. Senior year was turning out to be a lot more demanding than Chloe had expected, but she was still managing to keep up. Glancing up at the microwave, she makes a note of the time and gives herself five minutes to text with Brooke before getting back to work. 

 

**To: brookie**

_ Okay I only have 5 mins but _

_ I’M SORRY I’M WORKING ON IT _

_ PLEASE DON’T SPOIL ME I STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN PAST MIDSEASON FINALE _

_ I’m sooorrryyyyy _

 

She hadn’t watched an episode of  _ Grey’s Anatomy  _ in over a week, much to Brooke’s dismay. Ever since she and Jeremy had broken up the year before, the two girls had really gotten into  _ Grey’s.  _ It started as a break-up consolation sort of thing, but they’d both gotten really attached to the characters and continued to watch it together, season eight being their latest conquest. 

Brooke loved the show, but what Chloe really liked was just  _ having  _ a show again. It still stings - even though they’re broken up - it still makes Chloe’s skin crawl to think about those nights spent alone, not a single binge night for weeks on end. Not to be cliche, but, that was totally  _ their  _ thing. And then it became Brooke And Jeremy’s Thing. The overwhelming majority of Chloe is screaming that maybe it’s good that she and Brooke have less things, but there’s still the tiny part of her that longs to be back in that time where they could just. Be. Where she could exist beside her best friend with minimal suffering and no trees choking her out and no icicles growing in her throat. Because now every interaction is weird and she can feel herself being distant but she doesn’t know how to  _ stop  _ because maybe the chasm is too wide. Maybe she’s too late. Maybe these moments are just that - fleeting moments, never lasting long enough to erase out the awkward dancing around each other, the ever-growing ice fortresses.

But maybe Chloe can just let herself have, like, one fucking minute of happiness. Just one.

 

**From: brookie**

_ it’s okay!!!! just!!!!!!!!!!  _

_ u gotta WATCH _

_ what are you doing tonight??? _

 

She lets her fingers fly over the screen before the doubt can set in. 

 

**To: brookie**

_ Homework lol but I’m almost done thank god _

 

**From: brookie**

_ COME OVER we can watch from where ur at _

 

Chloe considers. It had been a while since they’d had a binge night, just the two of them. Jeremy occasionally showed up - yeah, he and Brooke had stayed friends - actual, real friendly friends who do things together - but that was mostly just for their movie marathons. He couldn’t really be bothered when it came to  _ Grey’s.  _

She hesitates, thumbs hovering over the screen. Would it be weird? Would  _ she  _ make it weird? She’s about to formulate another lame excuse when another text pops up.

 

**From: brookie**

_ ur gonna be SHOOK :0 _

 

She...  _ could  _ just leave her French for the morning. Besides, those exercises weren’t even mandatory.

 

**To: brookie**

_ SHHHHH _

_ NO SPOILERS _

_ But I’ll be there in ten  _

  
  


**From: brookie**

**❤❤❤❤**

 

God, that girl never ran out of love to give, no matter how cold Chloe got. She giggles softly to herself, letting the fondness of the moment wash over her. Maybe it would be alright. Maybe things were starting to look up for the two of them, awkward patch slowly being overcome. Sliding down the hill of their adversity, or some shit like that. Maybe. The thought of it is hopeful, like the soft, muted orange at the beginnings of a sunrise.

It’s the first smile in a long time that is completely fucking genuine. 

And then her mother’s voice sounds out from the hall. “Who are you texting?” There’s a hint of amusement there, like that special mom brand of casually playful invasiveness. 

“Just Brooke?” she responds without thinking, rolling her eyes at her mother’s tone. Chloe looks over and her blood freezes.

“With that smile, I would have thought you were talking to a  _ boy _ ,” she says coldly, the last word holding so much more malice than Chloe ever thought her mother capable of. Her eyes have narrowed, sharpening into tiny daggers. She’s never seen so much disgust in her life.

And honestly, what the actual, genuine, literal fuck. 

“You know what, fuck you,” Chloe decides, standing up suddenly. 

“Chloe Marie  _ Valentine- _ ”

“No, mom, shut up. Shut the fuck up.” She’s shaking now, brain completely blank but words flying out of her anyway. “She’s my  _ best fucking friend.  _ If she’s not allowed to make me happy, who the hell is?” She throws her hands up in the air, watching with satisfaction as her mother’s jaw opens and closes several times. 

“You will find a  _ boy  _ to make you happy,” she says quietly, voice low. Her fists are clenched but she doesn’t move any closer to Chloe, staying in the hall. 

“Oh my god, I get it, you’re homophobic! You’ve made that  _ very  _ clear  _ several  _ times,” she says, an edge of hysteria in her voice. She’s never spoken to her mother like this before. Never. “Are you not embarrassed of how bigoted you are? Like, how do you - do you not want me to be  _ happy?! _ ”

“I do-”

“No, you don’t, mom. You want me to be happy with  _ your  _ idea of happy. Which clearly doesn’t include my fucking best friend-”

“She is not just your  _ friend, _ ” she interrupts, horror painting her words an ugly shade of crimson. 

“What do  _ you _ know?” Chloe spits, starting to crack. 

Her mother laughs a short sigh, shaking her head. “It’s the little things, Chloe.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that so she just stays silent, chest heaving. She can feel the twigs snapping inside of her, rubbing her throat raw as she stares at the woman in front of her. She’s always though her mom was pretty, but in this moment, she despises how much she resembles her. How much of herself she can see in her is absolutely terrifying. Neither of them speak, just stare, both refusing to be the first to break.

Chloe’s mother gives in first. “Chloe,” she offers, tone more or less neutral. A compromise. Chloe doesn’t react, so her mother takes a small step forward.

“Don’t,” she snaps immediately, surprised at the ferocity of her own voice.

“When did you get so  _ mean _ ?” Her mother feigns disappointment, but Chloe doesn’t fall for it for one second. She just laughs, dark and bitter.

“You made me like this,” she spits, voice just barely breaking at the end. Because god, was it fucking true. Every look, every judging hum. All of it adding up to  _ this _ .

She looks hurt in earnest, now. “Excuse me?” 

“You were supposed to love me no matter what.” She thinks of Brooke’s mom, kissing them goodnight at sleepovers, making sure everything was okay at home for Chloe, lending her her old copies of the classics. She thinks about how she could rest her head on Brooke’s shoulder during a movie without worrying about Brooke’s mom throwing her out of the house. 

It’s not supposed to be like this, isn’t it?

“I  _ do _ -”

“Not if I love her.”

And then it all comes crashing down. Because, really, how long was she going to be able to ignore it? If it’s a universe thing - if it’s really, truly a universe thing - then there’s really no fooling herself. She couldn’t even fool her  _ mother _ . 

Sunlight floods into the kitchen, pouring light into Chloe’s chest. The branches crumble to ash. Warmth touches her fingertips and she breezes past her mother, adding an extra “Fuck you,” for good measure. Each step burns her feet and she waits until she’s on the porch to let a single sob rip out of her throat, wet and gasping. She coughs up the last of gnarled roots resting inside her stomach, spitting bile into her mother’s rose bushes just because she fucking can.

And then she starts walking. 

 

-

 

Brooke checks her phone for the fifth time in one minute, swiping to reveal the timestamp for Chloe’s last text. ‘ _ But I’ll be there in ten _ ’ it read. Twenty-three minutes ago. It’s dumb how much she’s stressing over this because it’s not like Chloe’s  _ dead  _ or something (even though she might be totally dead, oh god) But the alternative - the more likely scenario - is what worries her even more. 

It’s not uncommon these days for Chloe to bail out of plans last minute, or just avoid making them altogether. Brooke can’t help but sigh, tossing her phone to the other side of her bed. She could feel Chloe getting tired of her, lately. She thought it’d been bad last year - the month she dated Jeremy merited some seriously questionable behavior from her best friend - but this was worse. It was like they were strangers. There were good moments, yeah, but what if they were just that?

It was probably exhausting for her. Brooke knows that  _ still  _ being colourblind in senior year was not something Chloe was taking well, and it can’t help that her best friend practically thinks exclusively in colours. Sometimes they’re the only thing that makes  _ sense  _ to her. Chloe is pink, but there’s a layer of frost covering it up. That makes sense. Chloe is her best friend, but there’s some sort of barrier between them that neither can seem to cross. That doesn’t make sense.

Brooke wishes she could just speak in colours instead of words. She used to do it more often, and it used to be Chloe’s favourite thing in the world. She used to lie on Brooke’s bed, voice soft and low and somewhere else, asking her to talk about the colours. Those nights were spent painting universes, listing off shade after shade. It was like a dream, everything a bit slower and a bit softer around the edges.

Those nights didn’t happen anymore. Chloe stopped asking, and slowly, Brooke stopped telling. It was a hard habit to break - but eventually she’d noticed the way her friend’s spine tensed when she talked about the cornflower blue of the wind or the fuschia tinge their History teacher’s voice always had. So she stopped. Her words became monochrome, and she’s fucking terrified that her world is beginning to be, too. Sometimes at night she whispers the colours to herself, just so she won’t forget. 

So yeah, she can see why Chloe wants some distance. Brooke’s even exhausted herself with the weight of it all. And she’s just gonna have to deal with that. Alone, because it’s clear at this point that Chloe isn’t coming over tonight.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rings. Brooke forces herself to walk to the door instead of barrelling down the hallway, because god did she not want to spend the night alone. However, when she opens the door, it’s not the Chloe she’s expecting that’s standing - no, caved in - in front of her. 

She meets Brooke’s eyes and just  _ crumbles _ , knees turning to jello as she falls forward into Brooke’s arms. She lets out a sob, the sound muffled into her shoulder. And Brooke is just standing there because holy shit, when was the last time they hugged each other - if this can be considered hugging, this koala business they currently have going on here - and also because holy  _ fucking  _ shit, when was the last time she saw Chloe cry. Had she ever seen Chloe cry? Brooke tries to rack her brain for a single instance where she’d seen actual tears falling from her best friend’s eyes - but she can’t recall even one time.  _ She’d  _ broken down in front of Chloe countless times, but this? This is new. 

She wraps her arms tight around Chloe, trying to remember what  _ she  _ always did for Brooke when she got like this. There’s a second of silence where she thinks that maybe Chloe is done, hands still gripping to Brooke’s shoulders, but then there’s a loud, wet, sniffle and it starts over all again. 

“Hey,” Brooke says softly, remembering the power of speech as she starts stroking Chloe’s hair gently. “It’s alright, Chloe, it’s alright. I’m here.”

As they stand, melded together halfway onto the porch, Brooke wonders just what the actual, genuine, literal  _ fuck  _ is happening because, honestly? It’s not so much as the fact that Chloe’s here sobbing but the  _ why  _ of it. Did she finally meet her soulmate? It doesn’t really make sense that she’d be upset if that was it, because these were not happy tears - Chloe was  _ broken  _ right now. Was it something with her mom? Did someone  _ die _ ? Chloe chokes out another gasping sob and Brooke almost bursts into tears her goddamned self. She never thought she’d hate the sound of magenta.

“Hey, let’s go inside,” she offers, and with a sharp sniffle and a nod into her shoulder, Brooke coaxes Chloe over the threshold of the door, leading her upstairs. The short journey to her room passes in this surreal sort of blur, not unlike the heavy lavender haze that goes with getting high.  _ Being high would explain these last couple minutes really well,  _ Brooke thinks. 

When they reach her room, it’s another three minutes before the crying starts to subside and eventually turns into small, quiet sobs. Brooke holds her the entire time. They sit together, slouched against the wall for twenty minutes in complete silence. Chloe won’t - can’t - meet Brooke’s gaze, and Brooke doesn’t blame her. She can’t imagine how many years of bottled up emotions were just let out. 

And she would be fully content to just sit like that, their bodies slowly coalescing into one form, pink and yellow swirling into orange. She would not have a single problem with never leaving her bed, never watching another movie and never eating another cup of frozen yogurt. She would give up  _ using emojis  _ to just stay there with Chloe, all ignorance and all bliss. 

But she’s a good friend. The fantasy isn’t hers to live out. She is a good fucking friend, so Brooke takes Chloe’s hand (silently promising to herself that this would be the last time) and speaks. “You wanna talk about it?”

Chloe shimmies toward the edge of the bed, unfolding her hand from Brooke’s. (the loss of contact a pure, blinding white) She walks gingerly over to the dresser, sniffling softly. She still hasn’t looked at Brooke once since the door was opened and Brooke’s afraid she might forget what blue is. Her heart pounds in her chest as Chloe’s fingers hover carefully over her makeup box, looking. Her index finger finally lands on a lipstick, pulling it from the collection and into her hand. Then Chloe inhales deeply, and a moment later she exhales the entire visible light spectrum. 

“You know, this was always my favourite colour on you. Brings out the blue in your eyes.”

And it takes a second to process it, because now Chloe’s looking at her and her face is all hope and fear and calm and relief and adoration all at once and she’s holding Brooke’s favourite lipstick, this peachy kind of pink, kind of like that one nail polish Chloe always wears and - and then her heart stops beating. Full stop.

But Chloe just keeps going, voice low and soft and so full of  _ fond  _ that Brooke can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t  _ think.  _ “It makes me really happy when you wear it.” She’s  _ blushing  _ now, and Brooke’s pretty sure that if she had a brain that could function it would tell her Chloe doesn’t blush for anyone. “Blue is nice - really nice, actually. Y’know that like, that one little screech you do whenever Derek and Meredith are cute together? That’s blue. Navy blue.”

Brooke’s cheeks are wet now, tears spilling out of her with no end in sight. Not a single coherent thought forms, only colours swirling around in all their brilliance. She feels so full, so whole, so  _ un _ broken - but was she ever really broken to begin with?

“But if I had to pick one colour. Out of all the blues and the pinks and the oranges and the greens - your mom’s singing is this like pale kind of green by the way, it’s gorgeous - I would give them all up for yellow. That’s, uh, that’s you, Brooke. You’re yellow. Like, sunlight. Pure sunlight. Golden honey, highlighters, sunflowers, the sand - the sand in  _ Mad Max  _ \- and lemons, and the good starbursts, and fucking  _ minions _ , and pencils, ducklings, your cardigan,  _ you,  _ it’s just. It’s yellow, Brooke. It’s  _ you _ .”

There’s a beat where the both of them are just smile-crying at each other, chests heaving and hearts lifting. Three words repeat themselves in Brooke’s head, over and over.  _ I’m not broken.  _

“I have loved you for so long,” she says, finally, and it’s painless.

“You have?” 

“Every day, Chlo.”

Then Chloe murmurs something that sounds a lot like  _ well, fuck  _ under her breath and she’s crossing the space between them and then they’re kissing. The world explodes in technicolour, in infrared, in ultraviolet. For those few seconds they exist outside of the electromagnetic spectrum altogether, outside of time and space until they’re pulling away slowly, foreheads still pressed together. 

“That was-”

“Yeah.”

And for right now, that’s all that needs to be said.

 

They’re gonna have to talk about it. About Chloe’s mom, about the fact that they both hid it from each other for six entire years. About the damage their secrets caused over that time. About everything, really. They’re gonna have to talk about it and it won’t all be fun - really, if we’re speaking honestly here (and we are - Brooke and Chloe have decided to try that one out for real now, remember?) then none of it will be fun. 

But they’ll talk about it, and they’ll get through it because if they can get through it alone then they can certainly get through it again, together. 

They know that. It’s gonna happen, but not tonight. Tonight they’re lying on Brooke’s couch, feet tangled on top of each other and hands intertwined as  _ Grey’s Anatomy  _ flashes across the screen, neither of them really paying that much attention. Maybe they’re not quite at Cristina Yang’s level when it comes to stitching hearts back together, but they’re trying, and they’re trying together.

And right now, that’s all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i love girls
> 
> please let me know what u thought! smash that mcfuckin kudos if ur feelin it!!! leave a comment if ur rly feelin it!! (blease)
> 
> THERE'S GOING TO BE A SEQUEL W JEREMY/MICHAEL POV U KNO I CANT JUST LEAVE IT LIKE THAT THERE IS A LOT MORE TO COME IN THIS UNIVERSE IM ALREADY V ATTACHED SO EVEN IF U GUYS END UP NOT VIBING W IT THERES GONNA BE MORE CONTENT ANYWAy come yell at me on tumblr [@playertwojer](http://playertwojer.tumblr.com) xo


End file.
